It's green. So green. In the canyons. On the banks of freeways. In everyone's back yard.

The green is lush and rich and thick – with weeds.

Thanks to record rainfall, it's a bumper crop of such tenacious interlopers as bluegrass, sowthistle and mustard.

Tackle them early, experts say.

"Get them when they are small," said Vincent Lazaneo, horticulture adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension in San Diego. "If you let them go to seed, you are going to be facing them and fighting them for many years to come."

Or watching them burn this summer.

Weeds and brush ignored by homeowners can become fuel for fires.

"The more it grows now, the more it will be ready to burn later," said Thom Porter, a forester with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "We could have many small fires or we could have small fires becoming large fires pretty easily by late summer."

The options for attacking weeds are to pull them, cut them or douse them with herbicide.

Hand weeding or using tools such as hoes gets the plant by its root. For giant jobs, there is mowing and weed-whacking.

San Diego weeds

Common winter weeds in home gardens

Annual bluegrass

Filaree

Chickweed

Common groundsel

Sowthistle

Mustards such as shepardspurse, London rocket

SOURCE: University of California Cooperative Extension

"It is easier to maintain an area that is cut if you cut it every couple of weeks than to wait a month and a half and tackle it when it is a big unruly jungle," Porter said.

Chemical herbicides are absorbed through foliage and inhibit plants from making amino acids needed for growth.

Longtime nursery owner Walter Andersen said he recently pulled weeds at his Bay Park home during a break in the rain. He did it by hand because the weeds were near some expensive plants, and he didn't want to risk using a herbicide.

"The soil is nice and soft now, so most weeds will come out pretty easily," said Andersen, who has nurseries in Point Loma and Poway. "When they are 6 or 8 inches tall, they are not that bad. When they get 2 or 3 feet tall, that's when it's more of a chore."

Home improvement stores are stocking up on herbicides. Clerks expect aisles to be crowded this weekend with gardeners eager to get supplies.

"Ever since the first rains, we barely can keep Roundup and the other products in stock," said Kimberly Dejanovich, a gardening department buyer for the Home Depot in Carmel Mountain. "The sun's coming out, and they know there's another storm next week. They are eager to get in here and get the products that they need and get this stuff on the ground."